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While trying to save copies of files for backup, I tried using 'File History' in 'Control Panel>>Security'.

I noticed that some of the files did not backup and are missing. On looking into it, it seems to happening with files with a longer file name but these are not more than the permissible 260 chars.

Is this a bug? How do I take backup?

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  • Does Event Viewer have anything to say? What type of drive/filesystem are you using for File History?
    – Karan
    Nov 6, 2012 at 23:15
  • Can you give some examples of the names of excluded files?
    – Matthew
    Nov 6, 2012 at 23:19
  • No error message. I am using and external NTFS HD.
    – Kang
    Nov 6, 2012 at 23:19
  • @Matthew Simple filename with numerals and alphabets. Maximum filename is 238 in length.
    – Kang
    Nov 6, 2012 at 23:24
  • @Kang: Thanks for your update. Consider adding it as an answer to this question, and accepting it (so it will be more visible to future visitors).
    – Matthew
    Nov 6, 2012 at 23:27

1 Answer 1

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File History is adding 25 characters to the file name for date and time of the version, thus the total length is exceeding permits.

This seems to be a bug.

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  • 2
    Or as MS would say, it's "by design". Review: "It should be noted that File History is an incredibly naive tool. All it does is check the NTFS Change Journal (a file system-managed list of recently modified files), and then copy changed files to another drive. For versioning, all it does is insert a timestamp into the filename. ... You wouldn’t expect this kind of behavior from a dedicated backup tool, so I’m not quite sure why Microsoft has chosen such a rudimentary implementation for a built-in operating system tool."
    – Karan
    Nov 7, 2012 at 0:20

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